Let your chart titles do the talking

Last Updated: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 by
Laura Chisholm

Dynamic Chart Titles - New Feature

Making the title clearer on a graph will help present your KPI's more clearly. We've just added a new dynamical title feature that is actually part of your chart and can pick details of your data out and bring them easily to the attention of your reader. When you add titles to your charts on the dashboard you will see them very clearly, and if you use the presentation mode then they are invaluable

You can go from this

to this

This clearly shows the time period and value and draws the attention of the reader very quickly

You can find this new feature on the chart designer, on the options tab. There are five functions which can be used singly or in combination, or you can simply use text

The simplest title is to type in the text that you want - in this example we simply type the title Sales, and we can see it appear on the chart.

Functions

1.Inserting {t} into the optional chart headline will give you the date. This is dynamic and will change when your data changes – so if your data is daily then it will give today’s date, but if the data is monthly, then it will give the month etc. We can also put in some words to explain the title fully

2. Inserting {f} will give you the filter that you are using, but only when you are using a dashboard filter. When the chart is displayed, and the dashboard filer is set to all, then you will see a * on the chart if it is a category chart, or blank if it is a time chart.

when we change the dashboard filter, we see the following

3. Inserting {1} will give you the value of the first data column that is being charts. It does make sense usually to add some text to explain what this number actually represents. In this example we have added the explanation Sales, a £ sign to show the currency and the {t} function to show the time period this number represents

The functions are dynamic, so when the data changes, then the title will change automatically.

We can add up to 2 series of data onto our title. If we add a new data series of profit, and add it to our title,

Sales value £{2} for {t}, profit is £{1}

gives us

to distinguish between the data series, series 1 is always the one on the top of your series selection on the first tab of the chart editor

4. {LR} and {LU} give the date of the last piece of data, and the date of the last update

These are useful to ensure that your data is as up to date as possible, or as a check that updates have been made correctly.

The titling functions are especially useful when you are in the presentation mode as the chart title that you see on the dashboard does not appear in present mode. All the functions can be combined with each other and with text to give your reader really useful headline information at a glance